{"id":1614,"date":"2025-01-02T19:46:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-02T19:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/?p=1614"},"modified":"2025-07-20T15:00:20","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T15:00:20","slug":"climbing-and-spinning-with-the-gift-from-a-donor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/2025\/01\/02\/climbing-and-spinning-with-the-gift-from-a-donor\/","title":{"rendered":"Climbing and spinning with gifts from a donor…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ninth day of Christmas.\u00a0 (Slow down, Christmas, don’t go yet…)\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Two friends have supplied the songs for today.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first one up is Keeleigh.\u00a0 Her transplant story began shortly after she was born, leading to a multi-organ transplant as she was beginning her teenage years.\u00a0 Keeleigh wrote about it\u00a0in a\u00a0blog<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0these pages, in September 2018.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>This year she’s won a shelf-full of medals at the European Transplant Sports Championships, in Lisbon, Portugal, and the British Transplant Games in Nottingham, become Team Manager for the Birmingham Adults Transplant team, and\u00a0been selected to represent the GB&NI team at the World Transplant Games in Dresden, in August 2025.\u00a0 (And, of course, much more, with a generous dose of laughing and dancing.) And somewhere, an organ donor and their family have made it all possible.\u00a0 On her transplant anniversary in December 2024, Keeleigh said, “The gratitude and grief for a family that I’ve never met, continues to influence my day to day decisions on how I choose to live the incredible gift that is life.”<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And so, to Keeleigh’s songs…<\/em><\/p>\n

“There\u2019s a couple of songs that have such a huge impact on my transplant story.\u00a0Never had a dream come true, by S Club<\/strong>\u00a0played as we pulled into the car park of the hospital in the early hours of the 16th December 2011, and\u00a0was the first song that my family heard on the radio when I came out of theatre on the 17th!\u00a0 The wording is very, very fitting of course! ‘Never had a dream come true, till the day that I found you,’ speaks for itself!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Climb, by Miley Cyrus<\/strong>\u00a0is a big one,\u00a0(and is for some of our other contributors in this 12-day series)<\/em>\u00a0talking about how things aren\u2019t always smooth sailing, but it\u2019s about the journey we endure, not the destination.<\/p>\n

One of my personal favourites is\u00a0Fight song, by Rachel Platten<\/strong>.\u00a0 ‘This is my fight song, take back my life song, Prove I\u2019m alright song, My power\u2019s turned on, Starting right now I\u2019ll be strong. I\u2019ll play my fight song, And I don\u2019t really care if nobody else believes, \u2018Cause I\u2019ve still got a lot of fight left in me.’<\/p>\n

More recently, there was a song played at the Australia World Transplant Games, 2023,\u00a0Because of you, by Rose Parker<\/strong>. I believe you can find it in the\u00a0opening ceremony\u00a0<\/a>video on YouTube, just skip to minute 39 for the song.\u00a0 It speaks about both sides to transplantation and organ donation and is beautiful!!”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u00a0\"Keeleigh
\nKeeleigh<\/em><\/h6>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

There’s no shortage of\u00a0images in\u00a0the last song for today,\u00a0contributed by Jane, the mum of a transplant recipient.\u00a0 Like Keeleigh, Jane’s son, James, is part of that whirling, dancing, caring group of friends from the Transplant Games, and no stranger to climbing the medal winner podiums.\u00a0 His climbing also includes many a high peak, including Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike, and Snowdon all within 22hrs 39 minutes.\u00a0 Just as courageously James shared his transplant story in a<\/em>\u00a0blog<\/a><\/em>\u00a0for Live Loudly Donate Proudly in September 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n

We often talk of the transplant journey and its hospital adventures and misadventures, as a rollercoaster.\u00a0 Highs and lows, out of our immediate control, taking us where it goes, like it or not.\u00a0 Sometimes, some of us\u00a0begin to dread the mention of the word, with all its connotations.\u00a0 An attentive listening to Jane’s chosen song, Windmills of your mind, sung by All Angels,<\/strong> offers an echo of\u00a0the dizzying experience and mental entanglement for those intimately involved in the world of transplants.\u00a0 Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon…a clock whose hands are sweeping…<\/em><\/p>\n

\"JaneJane<\/em><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ninth day of Christmas.\u00a0 (Slow down, Christmas, don’t go yet…)\u00a0 Two friends have supplied the songs for today. The first one up is Keeleigh.\u00a0 Her transplant story began shortly after she was born, leading to a multi-organ transplant as she was beginning her teenage years.\u00a0 Keeleigh wrote about it\u00a0in a\u00a0blog\u00a0for\u00a0these pages, in September 2018.\u00a0\u00a0This year […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_wpcom_ai_launchpad_first_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,6,8,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-news-and-events","category-personal-story","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/phtpid-q2","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1641,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614\/revisions\/1641"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/live-loudly-donate-proudly.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}